Assuming the 68W measured number was wall power it was probably in spec; at 88% efficiency 68W in provides 60W out and peak efficiencies are near 50% at full load it''ll fall off some. It the brick was a cheap low efficiency model it might only have been putting out 50-55W at that point.Reply

I've used a 60w power brick on my A6-5400K system for nearly a year. Like all of them, it is a cheap Chinese brand, but it works. It does get hot, but I never pull 60w from a system where the CPU itself is rated at 65w alone. If you include motherboard overhead (chipset, memory) and SSD/optical drive (yes, it has both) the system should theoretically pull 90w.

But it doesn't. I have a killowatt and it idles around 18w and never goes over 50w while playing back video. Even during Bluray playback it stays under 50w.Reply

What I found interesting is that the system was tested with a 45W TDP CPU but in the specs says that supports up to 35W TDP CPUs and in the Datasheet also says that Power Design Supports up to 35W CPUs. Requiring 10W less translates into a cooler systems and the 60 W power supply should be ok. I found that i7-3612QM and i7-3632QM are 35W TDP CPUs with Tj 105 °CReply

Agreed...I am in Tucson, Arizona. This would be great for our shipping clerk but he works indoor but with a large rollup door right next to his office. In the summer his office easily exceeds 90 degrees. Reply

Why should you buy such a powerful CPU if you won't use it. I can imagine, that maybe some movie/music editor would like a fanless dead silent system. Whenever he renders the scene, all four cores will get loaded. The GPU is just a IGP, which won't add that much to the overall temperature. So it's just too hot!You also have to keep in mind that inside it will be equivalently hot, causing a reduce life of the used parts.The design is just poor. They would have needed something like the new Mac Pro, which, in my opinion, is the best design for a passive system, because it works like a chimney and causes air flow both inside and out.Reply

Agreed. What's the point of having an i7 if it can't be used without subjecting the user to burn hazards and sending the components to an early death? If the outside of the case reaches 155 F, how hot does the RAM get? The SSD? The interior heat was probably well above the recommended tolerance of those and other components.

It's not like there aren't use cases for quiet, dust resistant, but powerful machines. A video producer could certainly use a perfectly quiet machine and would definitely run the CPU at full throttle for hours on end. A site architect or movie crew might also find such a combination more beneficial than an i7 laptop.

Most industrial users would probably find a Celeron, Pentium, or i3 more than adequate. This may be a fine case with those lesser chips, but since it wasn't tested, we just don't know. The i7 clearly seems a bit much for their product. They should probably have delivered a more typical customer build for testing, instead of trying to push the envelope with Intel's latest, greatest.Reply

Actually, Haswell seems more suited for this product- but Ivy is cheap (for now). The system can hold it's own without external help, and provides the perfect balance of performance for it's size and passive cooling. With even a little ventilation, it'd be perfect for running at full load, and few would really stress it that much.

Still, I do like the idea of using lesser SKU's; but that's not what this design is for.Reply

7th sentence into the article. "So, it is not surprising that Ivy Bridge-based industrial computers are seeing a strong presence in the market only now after long-term validation by the manufacturers."

My current computer is a MiniITX placed on my desk next to my display. I would place the habey PC on the same place, and there's just no airflow, except I mount a fan on top of it. I also don't think that Ganesh placed this computer inside a small box but ran it on his main desk.

What person needs a quad core high end system? How is GigE not fast enough? Why should USB3 (5Gbit/s) not be fast enough? And what has all of this to do with TB? And how are Windows people able to do music or video right now? They also don't have TB! And they also can't stuff all hard discs in their case, but need some larger and more secure storage server somewhere else.

Why do you compare the Mac Pro with this one? I only mentioned it because of its design. The design of this habey is just poor and fails to cool the system. A design similar to the Mac Pro which makes use of a chimney effect would have been much better.

So this system is to be used outside of the living room, but according to you also not suited for work because it lacks TB and we might tax it too much. So we could use it for terminals which need a quad core CPU (I don't know a single use case), but therefore it's also not suited because it will get too hot because there won't be any air flow either.

I completely disagree. It's a quad core! If Habey wanted to provide a CPU for occasional bursts used in industrial environments, they would have used a high end dual-core! If one program needs some more processing power it easily gets it. But barely any program scales dynamically across multiple cores, except high end software which won't get used in a terminal but in production environments. And then, this software really taxes the system. You also don't need a quad core for multi-tasking, except you really tax the system (maybe 3 cores) and still want to continue to work with the computer on the fourth core. But again, this Habey system won't support this without exceeding several temperature limits.

And maybe there are no comparable systems, because such a small case with such a poor 08/15 design just can't dissipate the required heat without active cooling?Reply

This is a machine designed to function without fans. If it requires air flow in order to work properly, the design is a failure. This case was probably designed to run with far cooler chips, but since that wasn't tested with those, we just don't know if it works adequately with them.

Yes, a lot of video production is done on Mac's, but certainly not all. Probably not even half. Windows does still hold nearly 90% of the desktop / laptop market.

You fail to address the really important question. What is the point of an i7 if it's power can't actually be used? Transcode some video and the temperature of the case will exceed many safety standards and the internal components will be heated to well beyond their rated temps?

Definitely not throttling, but I guess the discrepancy is that Habey locks the frequency to 2.6 GHz (Turbo disabled by default, which is what I tested). Maybe your 3630QM is not Turbo-locked in the BIOS.

I was keeping track of the CPU freq all through the benchmark programs and also during the 18-hours stress test.Reply

I'd think that Turbo would be useful if the system were in a ventilated environment or wasn't subjected to sustained loads, from a race-to-idle perspective. I do understand the reasoning behind leaving it off by default, though, as it prevents wild swings in performance due to throttling after Turbo.Reply

On the power consumption and thermal performance page, it is stated that it is throttling."One of the unfortunate aspects of the Aleutia Relia was that the unit ended up getting throttled when subject to heavy loading even at room temperature (72 F)."Reply

Why a CD vs a USB? I've had to make one of these decisions recently. $0.12 vs $2-3, on something people just use the internet for anyway. The customer really doesn't want to pay an extra $3 for something that 99% of them don't use.Reply

And if they wanted the CD they can just set up with an external CD drive, which oftentimes they already have on-hand. Once external CD drive can serve a whole setup team and any of the different industrial pc models.Reply

Appreciate seeing the reviews of industrial equipment. I use machines similar to this on a regular basis at work (electrical engineer doing industrial automation). The PCs are used to run HMI software for motion controllers, as well as NI's LabView.

This specific model doesn't meet my needs in a few ways - lack of serial ports and lack of 24 V DC input power, but it's good to be aware of other brands.

I'm curious how my usual choice would stack up against this. I've used dozens of Advantech UNO-21xx units, mostly the UNO-2172 with a slow-as-hell Celeron M 1.5 GHz CPU, but they've recently released the UNO-2184G that gets you all the way to some sort of second-gen Core i7. Haven't tried one yet though.Reply

Well, I'm not sure anyone has done long-term thermal testing of this hardware quite yet. Additionally, I doubt that the usual scenario will see it running at full load for more than minutes at a time. If it were run full throttle for extended amounts of time, I would expect the PSU to fail first.If you run this device 24/7 at full load, you will know this in advance, and have cooling installed inside the cabinet. But clearly, this was not designed for this kind of permanent load. Still, the cooling keeps everything within spec, so if anything goes wrong inside the first two years, you'll be covered by warranty.Reply

Based on how quickly it cools down, having any real airflow over it would likely mitigate most cooling concerns, even in the rare instance of a 100% sustained load over time. I think ddriver is over-dramatizing the issue quite a bit; as you (Rick83) say, the PSU would be likely to fail first, and anyone using this system would be aware of the thermal constraints beforehand and would build the rest of the 'system' with that in mind. And that wouldn't be very hard to do.Reply

Considering the outside of the case hits 70 degree C and it is even hotter inside, that already puts most of the components outside of their optimal operating temperatures, dramatically increasing the chance of errors or failures. Industrial strength equipment never operates on its limits and mandates significant headroom.

Very interesting. I have a fanless HDPLEX case running an i7-3770T. Running at full load for about 45 mins it tops out at around 92C core temperature (room was 23C). I use it as an HTPC so other than encoding a Bluray it rarely gets stressed to that level. Hdplex have improved the case since I got mine so may well run a few degrees cooler with the new case.

I believe that the best way to drop core temperature is to remove the IHS, replace the crap intel thermal paste with something decent and refit IHS. I could not be bothered, but worth consideringReply

With the system running that hot, I would've liked to have seen temperatures for the other components, notable the SSD. I don't think SSDs are designed to run as hot and as long as CPUs/GPUs are. Same with the RAM.Reply

That'd definitely be nice, but I don't think it'd be much of a problem; RAM has a high thermal tolerance these days, and the SSD is pretty far away. I'd be much more worried about an mSATA drive and WiFi mPCIe card, though, and I'm kind of puzzled why those options weren't explored.Reply

Well looking at the external temperatures of the case, it looks like some areas are hitting 70 degrees Celsius, which is above the working temperature for many SSDs I believe, which are rated for 60 degrees. generally? But not to mention every component in there is likely baking at around 70 C, I'd like to see an analysis on the actual temperatures inside there and the impact this would have on longevity.Reply

Way overkill - within a couple weeks, I'll be putting a PC in my car - AsRock E350 board with a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD, 7" Lilliput touchscreen in the dash - all told it'll be around a third the price these start at, and won't have any problems serving up music/GPS/radio. And you hardly need dustproof - check mini-itx.com or mp3car.com, they have cases specifically intended for car PCs that would still let you build something way cheaper than this. Depending on where you live, it could be a poor choice for another reason - ambient heat could be a problem, and it wouldn't be the easiest thing to ventilate.Reply

Why overkill? If you hang one or two HD cameras onto it, or like 4 SD ones, it will need that kind of power. Not to mention if you use several monitors.

However, as a Car PC it has FAR too few USB connectors, since USB Hubs are just a huge source for problems. Even for normal use its too few. Even my desktop computer needs at least 9 and I really dont have anything unusual on it.Reply